Posts Tagged ‘Bible prophecy’

There’s a Bible passage that ought to haunt you in terms of our current administration’s dishonesty and false policies. The prophet Isaiah says, “You boast, we have struck a bargain to cheat death and have made a deal to dodge the grave. The coming destruction can never touch us, for we have built a strong refuge made of lies and deception.” Isaiah 28:15

I want to talk to you about Bible prophecy. I want to talk about prophecy as DIRECTLY RELATING to the real world, to the world of today’s news and events and policies. I want to talk about those vicious Islamic State attacks in Paris, France yesterday in which some hundred people were murdered one-by-one execution style in a theatre, with 129 total murdered and more than 350 shot.

Jesus taught us that the last days would be uniquely characterized by “wars and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6). The French president yesterday called the attack “an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army.” But does ANYONE believe France will actually launch a massive ground invasion of Syria and the Islamic State caliphate? No, they’ll fly a few planes and accomplish nothing because the history of warfare proves that aerial bombing alone accomplishes NOTHING. It’s not a war; it’s just a bunch of empty words that pretend to mean something. Just as Obama’s own phantom campaign where he says he’s fighting Islamic State but is doing nearly NOTHING as he creates the ILLUSION that he’s doing something. Just days before Obama’s “we have contained them” blathering, a Russian passenger jet was destroyed by Obama’s “contained” Islamic State with 224 murdered in the worst aviation disaster in Russian history. “Wars and rumors of wars” are all around us in a way never before seen in all of history. The United States hasn’t actually DECLARED a war since World War II!!!

Let me point out a couple of facts that lead to a conclusion: the United States hasn’t declared a war since 1945. Israel became a nation in miraculous fulfillment of Bible prophecy in 1948. Jesus described “wars and rumors of wars” characterizing the last days that were inaugurated when Israel was regathered as a nation (see the last days prophecies promising this very thing). And since then America has never declared a single actual WAR according to its own Constitution. And now was it a “war,” or a “conflict” (Korea, Vietnam) or a “police action,” or an “authorization to use military force,” or WHAT?

More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.

The complaints spurred the Pentagon’s inspector general to open an investigation into the alleged manipulation of intelligence. The fact that so many people complained suggests there are deep-rooted, systemic problems in how the U.S. military command charged with the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State assesses intelligence.

“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official said.

We can go back to all the utterly fallacious statements that were flowing out of the White House as well as out of the next Democrat president-wannabe’s mouth and we can see these people for the abject Isaiah 28:15-style deceiving LIARS that they are.

It’s ALL about politics and deceiving people into believing they have “peace, peace when there IS no peace.” Jeremiah 6:14: “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” Ezekiel 13:10: “It is definitely because they have misled My people by saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace. And when anyone builds a wall, behold, they plaster it over with whitewash… And don’t forget Isaiah 28:15 … The coming destruction can never touch us, for we have built a strong refuge made of lies and deception.

I truly believe that the United States was – past tense – God’s stopgap against the end-of-days and the coming beast because it protected Israel and DID serve the world by preventing evil from overwhelming good. But now that is truly over, Israel is isolated and bereft of true support, and Israel WILL therefore make a seven year covenant with the coming Antichrist that will start the Tribulation (Daniel 9:27) as a result of our refusal to lead.

Wars and rumors of wars. A strong refuge made of lies and deception. A Band-Aid over a gaping wound as we claim peace when there IS no peace.

If our enemies weren’t exterminating Christians like nothing EVER BEFORE SEEN in all of history, it would be a joke. But the extermination of Christianity that is taking place as we sit here is not funny.

I want to point something out as we begin this class: we all ought to become very familiar with the Old Testament. Why? Because WE ARE BACK IN THE OLD TESTAMENT TIMES when it comes to the sheer viciousness that we are seeing unfold in this world. You go back to the Assyrian Empire.

“Assyrian national history, as it has been preserved for us in inscriptions and pictures, consists almost solely of military campaigns and battles. It is as gory and bloodcurdling a history as we know.

Assyria emerged as a territorial state in the 14th century B.C. Its territory covered approximately the northern part of modern Iraq. The first capital of Assyria was Assur, located about 150 miles north of modern Baghdad on the west bank of the Tigris River. The city was named for its national god, Assur, from which the name Assyria is also derived.

From the outset, Assyria projected itself as a strong military power bent on conquest. Countries and peoples that opposed Assyrian rule were punished by the destruction of their cities and the devastation of their fields and orchards.”

I submit to you that the Old Testament days are back in business in the form of the sheer barbaric viciousness of Islamic State – which has similarly named itself for ITS god. Under the leadership of President Obama, and under the cowardice of the Western world that will not only not truly take them on, but won’t even call them the MUSLIMS that they are, they have seized a caliphate IN THE VERY SAME REGION THAT ASSYRIA USED TO RULE OVER. And the vicious terrorist Army is using the same vicious tactics that the Assyrians used before them:

The Assyrians decapitated their helpless conquered victims and made giant piles of their heads or hung heads on all the surrounding trees. They impaled their naked victims on stakes. They flayed their victims alive and piled their skins over the conquered city’s walls. They litarally painted the surrounding hills red with the blood of their victims. They burned their victims alive. They cut off arms, legs, noses, ears and gentiles of their screaming victims. They routinely gouged out the eyes of their victims and a favorite sport was to gouge out the eyes of a father’s children so he would know they were blind before they gouged out the father’s eyes.

We have their words preserved, such as in the words of the famous Old Testament Assyrian king Sennacherib:

“I cut their throats like lambs. I cut off their precious lives (as one cuts) a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made (the contents of) their gullets and entrails run down upon the wide earth. My prancing steeds harnessed for my riding, plunged into the streams of their blood as (into) a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings low the wicked and the evil, were bespattered with blood and filth. With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plain, like grass. (Their) testicles I cut off, and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers.” †

I simply point out for the factual and historical record that Islamic State is doing all these things today and worse. They’re burning people alive. They’re crucifying people by the thousands. They’re murdering Christian children as if they were chickens or farm animals in a slaughtering pen. Aid groups are predicting that Christianity will end in the Middle East within a decade at the pace they are being either martyred, forced to convert, or flee. And aside from meaningless words, the world has done NOTHING to help them.

Barack Obama and the Democrat Party demonized George Bush and Republicans in 2008. According to the liberal narrative, 9/11 was basically just some kind of fluke and Bush caused all these wars that only happened because the Muslim world was responding to Bush’s bullying and Bush had infuriated and radicalized these people who somehow did all their terrorist attacks in the name of Islam but weren’t actually “Muslims.” It doesn’t matter if these terrorists are following the literal teachings of Muhammad – who himself was a murderer and a terrorist – and the Qu’ran FAR more closely than any other “Muslims” today. If liberals say they’re not Muslims then they’re not Muslims, and to put it in terms of the line from the famous Seinfeld program, “No soup for you!” In contrast to fighting them, Obama promised he would restore peace in the world by reaching out to the Muslim world where these non-Muslims came from. President Obama even tried to redefine whether or not they were “terrorists,” at first insisting their terror attacks were NOT terror attacks but “man-caused disasters.” Whereas to use the word “terror” was “the politics of fear.” Remember that? Numerous domestic terrorist attacks – including one in which a Muslim man cut the head off of a victim while shouting “Praise Allah!” – were designated as “workplace violence.” Obama preened as the president who would END wars, never start them.

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 2009 (IPS) – CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, supported by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, tried to convince President Barack Obama that he had to back down from his campaign pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months at an Oval Office meeting Jan. 21.

But Obama informed Gates, Petraeus and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that he wasn’t convinced and that he wanted Gates and the military leaders to come back quickly with a detailed 16-month plan, according to two sources who have talked with participants in the meeting.

Obama’s decision to override Petraeus’s recommendation has not ended the conflict between the president and senior military officers over troop withdrawal, however. There are indications that Petraeus and his allies in the military and the Pentagon, including Gen. Ray Odierno, now the top commander in Iraq, have already begun to try to pressure Obama to change his withdrawal policy.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilizing public opinion against Obama’s decision.

Petraeus was visibly unhappy when he left the Oval Office, according to one of the sources. A White House staffer present at the meeting was quoted by the source as saying, “Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama.”

Petraeus, Gates and Odierno had hoped to sell Obama on a plan that they formulated in the final months of the Bush administration that aimed at getting around a key provision of the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement signed envisioned re-categorizing large numbers of combat troops as support troops. That subterfuge was by the United States last November while ostensibly allowing Obama to deliver on his campaign promise.

Gates and Mullen had discussed the relabeling scheme with Obama as part of the Petraeus-Odierno plan for withdrawal they had presented to him in mid-December, according to a Dec. 18 New York Times story.

Syria has beent he main haven for ISIS and Bush had nothing to DO with Syria. And it was OBAMA who pulled all our troops that would have secured Iraq from Islamic State, just as it was OBAMA who foolishly uttered his “red line warning” in the Syria that is Islamic State’s prime haven and then backed down and did NOTHING – which emboldened both our Russian and our terrorist enemies to keep fighting because America was led by a weak, dishonest fool whose sole “strategy” was to govern according to Isaiah 28:15.

Obama is actually doubling DOWN on his foolish and wicked stupidity. So yesterday he announces that he is going to let five more senior terrorists go free from Gitmo so he can replenish the ranks of the terrorist leadership. But don’t worry: “we have struck a bargain to cheat death and have made a deal to dodge the grave. The coming destruction can never touch us, for we have built a strong refuge made of lies and deception.”

Now, I’ve been railing against Obama. But let me say this: if politics ever WAS the answer for us, it is certainly not the answer any longer. The world has spun wildly out of human control. What if we elected Republicans? Does anybody think Islamic State would stop fighting us? Does anybody think the spirit of terrorism that now virtually defines the Middle East and Islam would stop? When will one billion Muslims quit? At this point, they are either going to fight us because we are refusing to fight them and they are emboldened or they are going to fight us because we are fighting them and they are retaliating.

In broad strokes, al-Qaeda acts like an underground political movement, with worldly goals in sight at all times—the expulsion of non-Muslims from the Arabian peninsula, the abolishment of the state of Israel, the end of support for dictatorships in Muslim lands. The Islamic State has its share of worldly concerns (including, in the places it controls, collecting garbage and keeping the water running), but the End of Days is a leitmotif of its propaganda. Bin Laden rarely mentioned the apocalypse, and when he did, he seemed to presume that he would be long dead when the glorious moment of divine comeuppance finally arrived. “Bin Laden and Zawahiri are from elite Sunni families who look down on this kind of speculation and think it’s something the masses engage in,” says Will McCants of the Brookings Institution, who is writing a book about the Islamic State’s apocalyptic thought.

During the last years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the Islamic State’s immediate founding fathers, by contrast, saw signs of the end times everywhere. They were anticipating, within a year, the arrival of the Mahdi—a messianic figure destined to lead the Muslims to victory before the end of the world. McCants says a prominent Islamist in Iraq approached bin Laden in 2008 to warn him that the group was being led by millenarians who were “talking all the time about the Mahdi and making strategic decisions” based on when they thought the Mahdi was going to arrive. “Al-Qaeda had to write to [these leaders] to say ‘Cut it out.’ ” [Atlantic, What ISIS Really Wants”]

And now it is al Qaeda that has been “cut out” – finished off largely by the stunning successes of Islamic State rather than by us – and Islamic State reigns supreme. And which terrorist do you like better? Bush’s elitist al Qaeda or Obama’s vicious Islamic State end-of-days blood-drenchers??? Seriously, al Qaeda was like the “good old days” of FRIENDLY terrorism compared to the horror we are witnessing now.

This is a war of civilizations and worldviews and ONE is going to win and the other is going to be utterly destroyed. One combatant cannot even acknowledge that the other combatant is MUSLIM and that ISLAM provides the ideological power and the recruiting field for the vicious murderers who have already repeatedly murdered the other combatant while screaming “Allah Akbar!” It boils down to this: the conservatives are people who would rather go down and fighting; the liberals are people who prefer to die helplessly on their knees pleading like victims because they’ve enshrined VICTIMHOOD as their most cherished members (having whined at us that blacks are victims of whites, gays are victims of straights, women are victims of men, the poor are victims of the rich, and students are victims of whatever).

At least unless and until the Antichrist comes to power. That is just around the horizon now. I can hear the hoofbeats of the horsemen riding like hell to lead us to the Apocalypse.

So what is the point I want you to comprehend as we consider the affairs of the world today in light of what the Bible described the world climate in the last days?

1st we should radically trust God. Because the God of Creation and History Who can unveil for us the affairs of the world and then bring those affairs to pass 2,000 years later, 2,600 years later, and beyond – is obviously worthy of radical trust. A parent might be able to so order the life of one child, just for the sake of argument, but that parent clearly can’t order the whole world. But amazingly, we tend to believe God is sovereign over history, but somehow NOT sovereign over our own individual lives. There’s this warped way of thinking when it comes to God: we believe He can direct the whole universe, but He somehow can’t direct our own lives. NO! If He can run the world, He can run my life. How could God order the history of the whole world but be incapable of ordering your life? We need to radically consider the sovereign God over all history and radically trust Him as sovereign over our own lives.

2nd is a radical comprehension that we are now living in a time when God has prophetically told us that things aren’t going to go well for us in these last days. The mystery of lawlessness is upon us (2nd Thess 2:7-12). He prophetically told us about the characteristic of deception that we see in this age of media brainwashing and propaganda (vv. 9-11). God told us what the final, terminal generation would look like as we are seeing to our growing horror today (2 Tim 3:1-7). God told us about the ascendance of utterly godless “intellectuals” who would be “always learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth” (v. 7). The mystery of lawlessness, the ascendance of evil, as the righteous look around in stunned horror unable to do anything to stop it or even slow it down. The antichrist is coming; we’re seeing it unfold exactly as God told us it would happen. We’ve got gay marriage in blatant defiance of Romans chapter one. We’ve got the Obama regime forcing public schools to allow incredibly sexually-troubled boys to be allowed with their penises full-access into girl’s locker rooms. It’s an amazing thing to see as Christian wedding photographers and bakers and county clerks are put in jail or financially ruined by lawsuits. And we should be aware that a time of growing persecution is at hand culminating in Revelation 13:10. And just understand in a way we never have before that the world isn’t fair. But also understand that ultimately understand that God will ultimately restore the balance of every scale, right every wrong, that God is a God of justice. Ultimately the righteous will be vindicated and the wicked will be punished.

3rd is a radical commitment to Christ. When you realize that the last days are at hand, the universe is winding down, and very soon we’re going to be in the presence of Christ before His Bema Seat (2 Cor 5:10), that should inspire us to a renewed commitment to Him. At this point, no human can save us, whether it be a he or a she or a Republican or a Democrat. Christ alone is Sovereign Master over our lives. He alone is our King. We live in a time when the steadfast FOOS who say, “There is no God” are striving with every fiber of their beings to make human Government God. But Christ is the Rock of Daniel 2(v. 34) who will smash every human government. He alone is the One who is returning as King of kings and Lord of lords to ultimately rule over our lives.

“Jesus replied, ‘Don’t let anyone mislead you, for many will come in My name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and threats of wars, but don’t panic. Yes, these things must take place, but the end won’t follow immediately. Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in many parts of the world, as well as famines. But this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come. “When these things begin to happen, watch out! You will be handed over to the local councils and beaten in the synagogues. You will stand trial before governors and kings because you are My followers. But this will be your opportunity to tell them about Me.'” — Mark 13:5-9

In this statement, Jesus predicted several things: He said 1) “Don’t let anyone mislead you, for many will come in My name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many.” 2) You will hear of wars and rumors of wars…” 3) Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. 4) There will be natural disasters and famines like we’ve never seen. 5) And Christians will be handed over for official persecution by governments and by caliphates.

Jesus promised us that in the last days, many would come claiming to be Messiah. How many of these would be elected president of the United States???

Quoting David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to Obama, the man who marketed Obama to the world, David Axelrod: “He is the living, breathing apotheosis of the American melting pot,” enthused David Axelrod, who privately coined a nickname for his boss: “Black Jesus.”

Axelrod, as we know, isn’t alone. According to Klein, Micah Tillman, lecturer in philosophy at the Catholic University of America, called Obama “the Platonic philosopher king we’ve been looking for the past 2,400 years.” And no less an authority than Oprah has called him “The One.”

“You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and that is why Barack has captured the youth. And he has involved young people in a political process that they didn’t care anything about. That’s a sign. When the Messiah speaks, the youth will hear, and the Messiah is absolutely speaking.”

“Brothers and sisters,” Farrakhan said, “Barack Obama to me, is a herald of the Messiah. Barack Obama is like the trumpet that alerts you something new, something better is on the way.”

Farrakhan points out that the man Nation of Islam followers refer to as “the Saviour,” Fard Muhammad, had a black father and a white mother, just as Obama did.

“A black man with a white mother became a saviour to us,” he said. “A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall.” — Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, speaking on ‘Nation of Islam Saviours’ Day’, February 24, 2008

“Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away by Obama’s presence – not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence – to say it’s just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here’s where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.” — Mark Morford, SF Gate columnist, June 6, 2008

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas brought adulation over President Obama’s Cairo speech to a whole new level on Friday, declaring on MSNBC: “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

Thomas, appearing on Hardball with Chris Matthews, was reacting to a preceding monologue in which Matthews praised Obama’s speech: “I think the President’s speech yesterday was the reason we Americans elected him. It was grand. It was positive. Hopeful…But what I liked about the President’s speech in Cairo was that it showed a complete humility…The question now is whether the President we elected and spoke for us so grandly yesterday can carry out the great vision he gave us and to the world.”

The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

I could actually go on. But I believe I’ve made my case. Jesus was right. The Obama campaign played Obama as “the One,” as “the messiah,” as “Black Jesus,” as “sort of God, standing above the country, above the world.”

If you’re a Democrat, you already stand revealed as a proven Antichrist worshiper and it is only a matter of time when you fall in love with a new political god and worship him and take his mark on your right hand or on your forehead according to the prophetic description of how our political system will end in Revelation 13:16. I simply challenge you and defy you, Democrat, to show me anything even CLOSE to this coming from the Republican Party or any of it’s candidates. You show me this crap coming from Bush or McCain or Romney. You show me this or this or this.

You Democrats are literally TEN TIMES MORE MURDEROUS than Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. They murdered six million Jews in their death camps; YOU HAVE MURDERED SIXTY MILLION INNOCENT HUMAN BEINGS IN YOURS. And the day is coming when you will pay for your wickedness when God’s wrath washes over you as no tsunami wave as ever washed over anyone and carries you screaming into the hell you so richly deserve for your murder and your spirit of depraved perversion and your fanatic and criminal abuse of genuine justice.

Jesus was right as He described the last days and how they would come about as false messiahs demagogued their way to power and paved the way for the ultimate Antichrist who would lead the world to literal hell on earth during a seven-year period in which God gave a wicked people over to the demonic leader they truly deserved.

And we have seen The Rise, as Democrats proclaimed, “There is no God but Government, and Obama is Its Prophet!”

St. Paul described “the descent of man” into depravity as they first replaced God with godless evolution, professed themselves as wise when they were in reality becoming utter fools, and ultimately would become so toxic and so vile that they would do something that no culture on earth had ever done and exalt the perversion of homosexual sodomy as “marriage”:

Unbelief and Its Consequences

18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

24Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

26For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

28And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, 30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; 32and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.

Jesus said that 2) we would hear more and more and more about wars and rumors of wars.

I was reading the Los Angeles Times this morning (Thursday, May 7, 2015) and here were the titles of the articles I saw as I looked through the main page:

Page A1: “Exercises signal NATO resolve against Russia”

Page A3: “Drug violence escalates: As elections approach, an army helicopter is shot down and a new cartel emerges”

Page A4: “4 to hang in Afghan mob killing: Eight are sentenced to prison in the beating and burning death of a woman”

Page A6: “Syrian president is ‘not worried’ despite setbacks” with the opening paragraph reading: “Syrian president Bashar Assad said Wednesday that he was “not worried” about the battlefield setbacks and exhorted supporters to avoid succumbing to “frustration” as the Syrian conflict rages on without an end in sight.”

The onslaught of recruitment propaganda has multiplied the number of online enthusiasts for the Islamic State in the United States, giving counterterrorism investigators the difficult task of deciding which are simply fantasizing in public and which might be planning violence.

“The ISIS guys are talking to these wannabes on Twitter all day long,” a senior law enforcement official said. “It’s like the devil is sitting on their shoulder saying, ‘Come on, they’re insulting the prophet, what are you going to do about it?’ ”

The official, who would speak about the continuing investigation only on condition of anonymity, said that although Mr. Simpson had long been under F.B.I. scrutiny, he had not appeared to be preparing for violence. “There are so many like him that you have to prioritize your investigations,” the official said.

The brief statement from the Islamic State did not claim that it had ordered the Texas attack, though it called the gunmen, Mr. Simpson, 30, and Nadir Hamid Soofi, 34, “two soldiers from the soldiers of the caliphate.”

The statement expressed hope that the men, who had been living in Phoenix, would be granted “the highest rank of paradise” and threatened that future action against the perceived enemies of Islam would be “worse and more bitter,” according to a translation by the Site Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist statements.

Those words, “There are so many like him” ought to chill your blood. Because of Obama’s monumental failure to do anything other than be a lying, slandering, deceiving demagogue rather than an actual leader, our system to deal with violence and terrorism and war is fundamentally and profoundly breaking down. The New York Times describes “Mr. Simpson, a convert to Islam with a long history of extremism.” The man had been tracked by authorities for years. But our liberal-dominated courts have made the system powerless to stop the avalanche of these murderers. The FBI is overwhelmed.

“I mean, the truth of the matter is that for all the challenges we face, all the problems that we have, if you had to be — if you had to choose any moment to be born in human history, not knowing what your position was going to be, who you were going to be, you’d choose this time. The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been.” – Barack Hussein Obama

These missions have taken on new urgency as the U.S. military keeps a closer eye on China’s increasingly assertive territorial claims, including an unprecedented island-building campaign in the nearby South China Sea.

On any given day, U.S. aircraft bristling with cameras, sensors and advanced electronics crisscross the region, hunting submarines, surface ships and aircraft — and charting progress on massive landfills that have suddenly appeared from submerged reefs and shoals.

The fear is that these islands will provide bases for China to restrict air traffic or threaten vital shipping lanes.

The Navy’s patrol fleet has grown from 12 to 16 aircraft in the last three years and includes state-of-the-art P-8 Poseidons, militarized versions of Boeing 737s that are being deployed first to the Pacific.

“We go out, we watch, we look and we listen, to all things going on. And we do it routinely,” says Navy Capt. Mike Parker, who commands the patrol fleet. Parker said U.S. aircraft remain in international airspace throughout their missions.

He spoke to a USA TODAY reporter invited on a training mission aboard Pelican One.

U.S. officials have watched with alarm since China began its landfill operations in the South China Sea last year, creating artificial islands with astonishing speed.

Commercial satellite images show extensive landfill and construction on at least seven previously submerged reefs or atolls in the Spratly Islands group, located west of the Philippines.

Some of the new islands include runways that can accommodate China’s biggest military aircraft, along with port facilities and dozens of multistory buildings, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, a research project sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“China is creating a ‘Great Wall of Sand’ with dredges and bulldozers,” Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, warned in a speech in Australia on April 1. Harris said that raises “serious questions about Chinese intentions.”

Jesus said 3) “Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”

Well, I just wrote about that. The word Jesus uses translated as “nation” is “ethnos.” “Nation will rise against nation” is more accurately, “Ethnic group will rise against ethnic group.” Or Race will rise against race.

Jesus declared 4) “There will be earthquakes in many parts of the world, as well as famines. But this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come.”

Natural disasters, anyone? We have them in abundance like we have never before seen. We have a crippling historic drought in my state of California that is growing more and more terrible while we have floods elsewhere to fulfill what God declared would happen to a nation that abandoned Him: “I kept the rain from falling when your crops needed it the most. I sent rain on one town but withheld it from another. Rain fell on one field, while another field withered away” (Amos 4:7). Earthquakes? The world is watching Nepal reel from the recent aftermath of one as we speak, with thousands dead.

I know how godless man reasons, because the Bible tells me: “They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:4). But I’ve been pointing out that these same godless people ignorantly declare the truth of God’s Word everyday as they exploit every phenomena as “global warming” or “climate change” when it is just one more part of what our LORD told us would happen as we reached the end of days before divine judgment plunged the world into living hell.

And Jesus promised believers 5) “watch out! You will be handed over to the local councils and beaten in the synagogues. You will stand trial before governors and kings because you are My followers.” And we are watching it happen all over the world as Islamic State leads planet earth in the slaughter of Christians, as more Christians have been martyred these last few years than in all of history combined, as the Obama system of “justice” persecutes and punishes and terrorizes Christians for taking a stand against the sodomy of marriage and says that as Christian bakers they won’t bake cakes for gay weddings and as Christian wedding photographers they won’t depict the perversion of God-ordained marriage and as Christian pizza restaurateurs they won’t allow their property be used to celebrate homosexual perversion of marriage that has always throughout all of history been the union of one man and one woman.

The beast is coming. War like we have never even had nightmares of before is coming. And we’re watching it metastasize right now under Obama.

“The mystery of lawlessness” is that as all of these horrors engulf us there will be nothing the righteous can do about it to stop it. We stand dismayed but the Bible said these “perilous times” were coming. We were foretold that “Many will be purified, cleansed, and refined by these trials. But the wicked will continue in their wickedness, and none of them will understand. Only those who are wise will know what it means” (Daniel 12:10).

About two hours ago, Israel began the ground offensive necessary to root out the tunnels that Hamas is exploiting in their efforts to indiscriminately kill and maim as many Jews as possible.

Some 40,000 troops had been massed on the border waiting for the order to go in. You can’t just keep that kind of force idly hanging around. When Hamas violated yet another cease fire, it was time to pull the trigger and go.

There’s no reasoning with terrorists. There’s no chance for peace as long as Hamas has anything to do with the Palestinian government. You either kill them or let them kill you and your women and children.

Not that the world or the political left cares.

It’s truly amazing: liberals will literally fight to the death and go to extreme lengths for the “right” to murder as many babies as they possibly can. But they don’t believe the Jews have a right to defend even their own lives against violent terrorist attack.

I put it in 2 Corinthians 4:4 terms:

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

They also cannot see truth, because as Jesus Himself put it:

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” — John 15:18-19

Israel fights because Israel is FORCED to fight by those who hate her. Israel “occupies” because if they DON’T “occupy” their enemies will use the ground Israel gives up to murder Jews. And the reason people cannot see the obvious is because there is a personal Satan – “the god of this age” – who owns them and controls their thoughts and their emotions.

What we see now – both in America and throughout the world – is a spiritual war more than it is a political war. The Democrat Party is the party that is radically opposed to the God of the Bible and His righteousness as declared in His Word. They mock it. They hate it. They literally decry the Bible as the most evil book ever written because it opposes the homosexuality and the abortion and human government socialism that they worship and love above all things. They are completely blind. They have no clue and no desire to have any clue.

And the Bible assured us that in the last days, the world would be truly FILLED with such people. And that they would turn in violence and hate against the people of God.

And that is surely coming to pass.

The Bible in both the Old and New Testaments repeatedly prophesies that Israel would be surrounded and hated by literally every nation on earth. That has come to pass exactly as the Bible – which prophesied the rebirth of Israel from dry bones as happened in 1948 – declared it would. Especially since Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States and turned America’s back on Israel.

A number of significant Bible scholars have seen something that is part biblical and part extrabiblical: the ominous sign of four consecutive blood moons that would occur over four consecutive Jewish holy days.

Although single blood moons happen fairly regularly, four appearing so closely together is extremely rare. There have only been a series of blood moons a handful of times over the past 500 years. […]

Blood moons are set to appear in April 2014, on Passover, and then again in September 2014 during the Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot.

The timing is the same for 2015 — a total of four blood moons, all appearing on Jewish feast days.

“The sun and the moon and the Earth are controlled by God almighty,” Hagee said. “He is the one that is getting them in a direct alignment on a certain day at a certain time — but each time, it’s a Passover or Sukkot.

Is it a coincidence that we have what is happening right now in Israel and Gaza right smack dab in the middle of “blood moon” time?

These are frightening times – as the establishment of a caliphate across Iraq and Syria, the shooting down of a commercial jet with nearly 300 souls BY RUSSIA through their separatist proxies, and now this.

But Jesus told us that the end would be characterized as nation arising against nation, and that the violence would come closer and closer together as birth pangs come upon a woman about to give birth.

Christians can be steadfast and immovable because we alone can know beforehand where the world is going and where WE’RE going.

The Rapture is at hand. And if you aren’t looking up you are in danger of being left behind to see the coming Antichrist and the coming Tribulation and the coming Armageddon that the Bible describes.

I pray for the Israeli soldiers, that they be safe. I pray for the safety of the Israeli people, whom God has miraculously protected just as He declared He would in the last days. And I pray for the safety of innocent Palestinians who are forced to endure misery because they allowed a terrorist state to represent them. Most of all, I pray for the salvation of people – Jew, Muslim and all other Gentiles – as the world prepares to worship the beast and take his mark in these last days.

For the record, let me give you this spoiler alert: if you read the Bible, you find that God wins. Jesus Christ will return at the end of the seven-years Great Tribulation that is coming upon the world as King of kings and as Lord of lords.

(CNSNews.com) – Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of its Crimea region is “the most serious security crisis since the end of the Cold War,” NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Wednesday.

“We have seen Russia rip up the international rule book,” Rasmussen told an audience at Georgetown University in Washington DC. “Trying to redraw the map of Europe, and creating in just a few weeks the most serious security crisis since the end of the Cold War.”

Every nation on earth will start to scramble to acquire nuclear weapons to protect their borders and there will be NOTHING we can do to persuade them to give up those weapons. Because we have now proven that our word is no good and we will ultimately renege on whatever we promise we’re going to do.

This is a crisis that will continue to build and build long after Ukraine leaves the media’s ADD-style attention span. You know, while the mainstream liberal media is micro-fixated on that Malaysian airliner that nobody has any idea whatsoever happened to.

But please don’t think Barack Obama did anything stupid while all this was going on: he still spent his usual countless hours formulating his NCAA brackets.

I noted in my obtaining of the above facts on presidential golf that the U.S. media that criticized Bush so heavily for golfing have been strangely silent about Obama’s “love for the game.” It has been the FOREIGN media that has attacked Obama for his golfing as the classic evidence of an absentee president who fiddles around on the golf course while the world is burning.

When we compare Vladimir Putin to Barack Obama we get a bare-chested man riding a stallion compared to a weasel-thin, dumbo-eared metrosexual riding a bicycle while wearing mom jeans and a geeky helmet.

I have on numerous occasions compared Barack Obama to Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain was, like Obama, a ruthless tyrant when it came to domestic policy. Because of the power of his office, he could simply dictate. And dictate he did.

But when it came to dealing with aggressive and even hostile foreign governments, the world sat in stunned horror as Chamberlain proved himself to be an empty suit. He couldn’t dictate to Hitler with an executive order. So he did nothing while Hitler grew stronger and stronger and bolder and bolder and more and more aggressive. Until it took a war to stop him.

That’s where we’re at now.

Democrats want to tell us that Putin invaded Georgia and seized their territory when Bush was president. And that is true. But please consider two things that make that meaningless: 1) George Bush TRIED to avert the Russian seizure of Georgia in April of 2008 when he proposed that Georgia AND UKRAINE be allowed into NATO. That move would have stopped Putin dead in his tracks. Don’t tell me that Bush didn’t wisely see what completely blindsided Obama coming. But weak, cowardly, gutless liberalism is weak, cowardly, gutless liberalism both here and in Europe. And liberals wouldn’t tolerate such a “provocative move.” Oh, no. The spirit of Obama is the spirit of weakness and appeasement. If we bare our throats and demonstrate to our enemies by our nakedness that we are not a threat, their reasoning goes, we will avert war and live in a Utopia of peace and harmony. You’re seeing more of the same as we speak with Obama’s giveaway of the internet to countries that are hostile to us. And 2) Putin seized Georgia with less than three months left in Bush’s presidency – and you tell me if you have any honesty whatsoever what Democrats would have done had Bush moved aggressively to respond to Putin after Obama and Democrats had spent basically eight years demonizing him as a warmonger.

What was Obama’s response to Putin over Georgia once he got into office? Did he stand up to Putin? Did he push for the rest of Georgia not yet seized and Ukraine that had not yet had its territory seized to become part of NATO like Bush had done? Nope. He was pretty good at spending time with his NCAA brackets between rounds of golf then, too.

Bush TRIED to solve the problem in Georgia and Ukraine before either happened. What did Obama do???

“After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.”

Of course, the mainstream media savaged her for that. What else is their mission if not a fools’ mission???

In their third presidential debate, President Obama ridiculed Mitt Romney when he said that Russia remained a threat to the United States. Here’s what Obama said in the debate:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al-Qaida’s a threat because a few months ago when you were asked, what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia — not al-Qaida, you said Russia. And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.

“But, Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s. You say that you’re not interested in duplicating what happened in Iraq, but just a few weeks ago you said you think we should have more troops in Iraq right now.“And the — the challenge we have — I know you haven’t been in a position to actually execute foreign policy, but every time you’ve offered an opinion, you’ve been wrong.”

Here’s how Mitt Romney responded. Notice how Obama tries to cut Romney off before he can make his point:

MR. ROMNEY: I’ll respond to a couple of the things you mentioned. First of all, Russia, I indicated, is a geopolitical foe, not —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Number one —

MR. ROMNEY: Excuse me. It’s a geopolitical foe. And I said in the same . . . paragraph, and Iran is the greatest national security threat we face. Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I’m not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia or Mr. Putin, and I’m certainly not going to say to him, I’ll give you more flexibility after the election. After the election he’ll get more backbone.

Mitt Romney didn’t have “rose-colored glasses” when it came to Russia and Putin. History records that Barack Obama had the most asinine-looking rose-colored glasses ever devised when it came to them. And Democrats have the naked dishonesty to stupidly try to argue that nobody could have seen Putin’s seizure of Ukraine coming.

Obama: This is my last election…After my election I have more flexibility.

Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir

And what do we have now? The “worst crisis since the end of the Cold War” being played out after Obama has “more flexibility” to appease our enemy whom Obama went very much on the record to say was NOT our enemy at all.

How “flexible” are you feeling now, I wonder, Obama, you jackass?

So here’s the deal now that Obama has pulled America’s pants down and bent over for Russia and begged to have our national security and our prestige butt-raped: just like in World War II, we’re going to have to fight a world war to get our prestige that our weak, cowardly, gutless puke pissed away.

Obama’s “strategy” – if you could call his doing nothing a “strategy” – is this: where the world became outraged after Hitler’s second violation of a sovereign nation, what if instead of fighting the world had done NOTHING? What if we’d just allowed Hitler to have what he wanted and not do anything about it?

You see, THAT’S “peace” to a liberal. There is no war because we won’t fight. No matter what. And no matter what Hitler – or Putin – or any other thug does, we won’t fight. So we have “peace.”

Here’s the really funny thing about this: I’ve been reading liberals’ op-eds on this Russia-Ukraine thing, and the consistent theme is that Republicans don’t really have a solution now, either. So you can’t blame Obama for being weak because Republicans don’t want to go to war, either.

DAMN THESE PEOPLE ARE PATHOLOGICALLY DISHONEST.

Here’s the simple fact: as I already documented above, the “Republican response” would have begun going on six years ago back when we truly could have DONE something short of going to world war three. The “Republican response” would have began with Sarah Palin’s wisdom – and then after that Mitt Romney’s wisdom – that Russia and Putin were true threats. Which is something our failed Disgrace-in-Chief STILL doesn’t understand.

The “Republican response” would have been NOT to gut America’s military so that we are clearly too damn weak to do a damn thing about much of anything. That probably would have stopped Putin right there.

The “Republican response” would have been to follow through on what Bush started and LEAD by insisting that Georgia and Ukraine become protected by NATO membership. That DEFINITELY would have stopped Putin.

We never would have BEEN in this situation had there actually been a “Republican response.”

There comes a point when idiots have so destroyed something that it cannot be made right again. And don’t try “spin” reality such that Republicans who CLEARLY saw this disaster coming and SAID it was coming wouldn’t have done anything different to avert it.

Now the same media that literally mocked Sarah Palin for seeing the Russian threat and mocked Mitt Romney for “stealing a [functioning] national security policy from the 1980s is dishonestly trying to say that Republicans should have to fix the world that Obama has damn-near singlehandedly broken beyond repair.

You wonder what Hitler would have done had Neville Chamberlain said, “Do whatever you want. I won’t stop you.” Probably nothing good.

Here’s one on that: Vladimir Putin has built his new hegemony primarily upon his exporting of Russian oil and natural gas and his ability to shut the tap on any European state that would oppose him. What has Barack Obama done to counter this hegemony? Has he promised to increase American oil and natural gas exports and essentially taken Putin’s power away without firing a shot? That would counter his “oil is evil” philosophy, wouldn’t it? And so while Putin is lording it over Europe and Europe is cowed into refusing to go along with any tough sanctions against Russia as a consequence, Obama STILL won’t allow the Keystone oil pipeline which he has kept shut down for YEARS.

This isn’t even about going to war – although Obama was nothing short of a FOOL to simply take war completely off the table and signal Putin his abject weakness in advance – it’s about simple reality and Obama’s inability to understand it. OIL IS REALITY; Obama’s alternative energy is magical unicorn fairy dust. Obama’s refusal to harness reality makes him a weak fool.

That used to bother me greatly: how could it be that the mightiest nation in the history of the world isn’t even mentioned in Bible prophecy?

The answer is terrifying: the United States isn’t mentioned because it either won’t exist at all – having catastrophically imploded – or it will be so weak and so irrelevant that it won’t matter at all in the last days.

In the end, a leader will come in fulfillment of every Democrat’s and every liberal’s and every socialist’s fondest dreams. His government will so take over the world that literally no one will be able to buy or sell anything without the government’s approval. He will promise a Utopia but deliver the whole world into hell on earth.

And Barack Obama – along with the Democrat Party and everyone who supports them – is his useful idiot.

You won’t be able to stop him politically because Democrats and liberals all over the world will vote for him. You won’t be able to fight him because liberals will take away all of your guns.

The coming of Antichrist and his mark of the beast didn’t have to happen, but the God who knows the end from the beginning knew 2,000 years ago – knew in fact before the foundation of the world – that the terminal generation of Americans would be a stupid and depraved one.

There’s a fascinating show on National Geographic called “Doomsday Preppers.” It is basically a documentary series detailing various people and groups of people who are variously earnestly preparing for any of a number of “doomsday scenarios.” And while it is undoubtedly produced by Hollywood liberals who think the people they are focusing their cameras on are pretty much all nuts, it is likely that they find everything about the doomsday preppers nuts, such that they don’t feel they need to tip the scales in their favor with the kind of propaganda that they devote to so many other subjects.

A parallel would be the “ghost hunters” crap that started to dominate the Sci-Fi channel. As an example, I believe that these people are so off that the more accurately you frame them, the crazier they will look. And I think that’s how the “Doomsday Preppers” series is being filmed and produced.

I came across Doomsday Preppers because it was the channel up from the Military History Channel that I like to watch. And I’ve watched two or three episodes.

You should understand that if you are a liberal who believes Obama is lowering the level of the oceans and healing the planet, these doomsday preppers are as mentally and emotionally warped as I think the ghost hunters are.

Anyway, I’m a guy who takes his Bible seriously (another subject liberals find crazy). I believe the Bible is literally true, I believe the Book of Revelation describes our very close future and I therefore very much believe in “doomsday” stuff.

Maybe you don’t. There are two kinds of people who don’t, though: 1) those who don’t think the human race will end in tragic mushroom clouds, but rather that the human race will create a Utopia and they will climb on board the Enterprise and seek new civilizations with Captain Kirk. I’m not trying to mock anybody by putting it that way; there’s just two very different views of the future. And man either solves his own problems and lives happily ever after or he doesn’t and things get really bad really quickly before they get even worse. People of any intelligence believe in one or the other. The second group 2) are those who are frankly as much too stupid to consider their world ending as a cow lying in a field chewing its cud could consider its world ending. They’re just oblivious to anything beyond themselves.

Anyway, I’m in the group of thinking people who believe things are going to get really ugly as the human race systematically destroys itself.

So why am I not a “doomsday prepper,” then? I mean, if I think things are going to go to hell on earth, shouldn’t I be trying to maybe do something to either escape the chaos or be able to fight it?

On my view of the world, no, I don’t need to do that. God is in control. And as our world gets more and more crazy all around us, it is actually proving that the God who predicted it would become crazy knew what He was talking about.

As it became obvious that Obama was going to target the 2nd Amendment and specifically target so-called “assault weapons,” I seriously considered getting myself an AR-15 or an M4. Why? Well, because Obama wants to take away my right to have one and be able to defend myself with one if needed. But in my case, that wasn’t enough justification.

As a Christian, I do not have to go through life carrying a spirit of fear.

Again, if you’re going to even consider buying a weapon like an AR-15, you’d better think about it some first. That by no means indicates the answer will be, “you shouldn’t buy one.” But you ought to consider issues from “just where am I going to store this?” to “why am I buying this thing again?”

This is what gets to the essence of doomsday preppers versus Christians like myself.

Since I read my Bible and take my understanding of the world from that, I know that most of the scenarios that the “doomsday preppers” are fearing happen well into the Tribulation – after the Rapture – and I and my Christian brethren will be long-gone when the truly psycho stuff starts raining down upon a godless world ruled by the Antichrist.

Here’s the question: if a bunch of Obama’s jackbooted FBI killers came smashing through your door, would you want to be able to shoot them with your assault weapon? Well, the doomsday prepper is going to say, “Hell yeah I would. If it’s them or me and my family, I want to make it them. No brainer.”

But, you see, my answer to that question is no, I wouldn’t.

I think we should all realize that localized scenarios when a hurricane, tornado or earthquake hits and you are completely on your own are more likely than ever. People in high risk locations ought to consider buying an assault weapon to either discourage or deal with looters.

But I personally don’t spend my nights worrying about that.

The scenario I see developing is leftist fascists using the full weight of the power of government to “legally” drag me out of my home for my exercising of what had previously been my 1st Amendment right of free speech. I see that happening as America and the world unfolds according to what the prophets said would happen in the Bible.

Would I want that assault rifle in that scenario? No. Let them drag me away and put me in prison and then kill me. Frankly I’ll be glad if they take me in the very first wave. That way I won’t have to keep being brave after I see what happens to the other people who were dragged away for exercising what had previously been their 1st Amendment right of free speech.

We find that after they take your guns away, you’ve got to be braver and braver and braver in the face of a government that knows it has all the guns and all the power and the people have nothing but interrogation cells waiting for them if they complain about it.

So why would I shoot armed vandals trying to break into my home but not shoot at government fascists trying to break into my home? The answer is found in Revelation 13:10:

Anyone who is destined for prison will be taken to prison. Anyone destined to die by the sword will die by the sword. This means that God’s holy people must endure persecution patiently and remain faithful.

That passage tells me that in these last days, when the beast comes for you, God says to let him come and haul you away. There is a time and a place for everything under heaven, Ecclesiastes chapter 3 famously tells us. There WAS a time to fight – such as before the most wicked president in our nation’s history was getting elected through slander, fearmongering and demagoguery – but when the beast comes God calls us to stop fighting with our own strength and completely depend on Him.

I truly believe that we are heading for that day. I truly believe that we have arrived at the point in history when God’s people will have to endure rather than fight back. And I’m going to live that out in the here and now.

And when that day comes to my door, I won’t fight back. Because the Word of God tells me to endure patiently by trusting in Him and to remain faithful to His Gospel.

Three words for three chapters: judgment (16), wickedness (17), destruction (18). Rev 17 is an interlude informing us of an evil end times religious system depicted 1) in terms of the system made infamous by Babylon and 2) as a whore who has all of her rivals (i.e. Christians) murdered.

Rev 16 describes the seven final and worst judgments of all: the bowl judgments. What are these bowls? They are the golden censors used in the Temple to carry the incense (which symbolizes prayer). Remember the last time we discussed the prayers of the Raptured believers who were a sea of glass mixed with fire (Rev 15:2 cf 4:6)? They were calling for judgment to fall on the wicked world for murdering the Tribulation saints. We see today that God will answer that prayer! By this point in the Tribulation, God knows in His foreknowledge that every single unbeliever still alive on earth at this time will not repent no matter what (see Rev 16:9,11,21). These judgments in effect are a foretaste of hell. God brings judgment on these unbelievers warning, “This is what’s in store for your eternity if you refuse to repent.” They are God’s final warning; and the world will settle for nothing less than hell.

I won’t try to speculate on how these judgments are carried out. Remember that God has three ways to enact these judgments (by simply stepping back and allowing man to punish himself; by bringing natural disaster such as super volcanoes; by directly supernaturally acting). The 1st bowl (16:1-2) causes giant, incredibly painful malignant sores to break out ONLY on those who have taken the mark of the beast. These sores may be like the terrible ravages of radiation that we saw on survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 2nd bowl (v. 3) is poured into the sea and causes ALL sea life to die (say goodbye to fishing and aquaculture). The 3rd bowl (vv. 4-7) turns all the FRESH water into blood because the world that spilled the blood of the martyrs will get blood to drink. There will be no more water to drink. The 4th bowl (vv. 8-9) is poured out on the sun and scorches people with its fire. The 5th bowl (vv. 10-11) is poured onto the throne of the Satan-possessed Antichrist, plunging his entire kingdom into a darkness that is so oppressive it can be physically felt (cf. Ex 10:21). The 6th bowl (vv. 12-16) is poured upon the great river Euphrates, and its waters dry up to prepare the path of the 200 million man army of the kings of the east. The Euphrates marks the boundary between East and West. A famous rhyme by Kipling says “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.” But they WILL meet as armies led by China will one day commit the greatest banzai charge in human history. And this judgment is an example of one that can now be fulfilled by man: the Soviet Union completed a dam project that can shut off the flow of the Euphrates for an army to cross; and a huge road project has been constructed from China through the Himalayas of Kashmir to Pakistan. India denounced it to the U.N. at the time as “a threat to peace in Asia.” History will record India to be right as the kings of the east cross it like a red carpet to Armageddon. The secular humanist world will end in a greater bloodbath than every war up to this point combined. And the 7th bowl (vv. 18-21) causes the worst earthquake in history which will cause all the great cities of the world to collapse. It will remove islands, flatten mountains, split Babylon into three parts and result in 75 lb hailstones to plunge out of the sky.

Armageddon is the result of demonic influence both on the kings of the East and the Antichrist (Rev 16:12-16). It may be that demons employ signs and wonders to inspire the various armies to gather at Armageddon – with demons inspiring each side that they will win this global war of extinction (see Joel 3:12-14). As the kings of the east mass at the Euphrates, Antichrist inspires his own armies to meet them.

We don’t know how or when the order of battle will proceed. Part of that is because there are wars prophesied in Scripture that may happen BEFORE the Tribulation or during it. For example, take Psalm 83, which prophesied that modern-day Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine would attack Israel. I believe that prophecy may have been fulfilled in the Six Day War. Ezekiel 37-38 prophesies the War of God and Magog which has not yet occurred. It will involve the modern-day armies of Russia and the former Soviet Republics of Eastern Europe, Iran, Turkey, Sudan and Libya. The Old Testament names of these countries have been pretty well established for centuries based on the Table of Nations in Gen 10 (which is the most archaeologically significant page that ever existed). As an example the great archaeologist William Albright said, “The tenth chapter of Genesis…stands absolutely alone in ancient literature, without a remote parallel…”

The amazing thing is that these coalitions described in the Bible are EXACTLY what we have today: the Russians have EXACTLY this coalition dating to the days of the USSR. And China is right now solidifying its hegemony over Asia. The global alignments look RIGHT NOW precisely the way the Bible said it would look in the very last days. The only thing we don’t yet fully see is the ten kingdoms that will be ruled by Antichrist (and consider my next paragraph for more on that).

The War of Gog and Magog is not directly tied to the Tribulation (e.g., by being specifically cited in the Book of Revelation). If the War of Gog and Magog occurs prior to the Tribulation, it might literally be the event that causes the panicked international response out of which the Antichrist arises. I see the various events of Bible prophecy as sprockets and pulleys of a great machine that will all come together with every gear and cog falling into place such that what God said would happen WILL happen as He foreknew and foretold. Whether it be war or economic collapse or both, everything prophesied in the last days will suddenly fall together in an incredibly short time such that the Antichrist will simply step in at God’s appointed hour and take over – with much of the work of organizing the world for his takeover already having been done for him. If the War of Gog and Magog occurs during the Tribulation, it would be the first stage of the vast global campaign that is summed up by the word “Armageddon.” So Russia and Iran would lead the Ezekiel 38 coalition against Israel – and subsequently be destroyed by God. China and her allies would then position themselves to protect their oil interests, thereby causing the Antichrist and his armies to maneuver to try to block their access to the Middle East amidst nuclear mushroom clouds galore. All the major armies of the world will be gathered. It will be complete madness that will be hard enough to understand when it is going on, let alone be able to figure it all out even before it happens. But one thing is sure: there is enough detail and description in the Bible that Tribulation believers will look at their Bibles and at this insane war and recognize it when they see it.

And while this vicious “the survivor wins” battle is going on, the world will be utterly devastated by a supermassive earthquake that will either be unleashed by a massive nuclear exchange or even more directly by the hand of God. God will have given secular humanist man his chance to govern the world without God. When Christ returns in Rev 19, it will literally be to prevent the destruction of the planet and the death of every single human being on earth.

I’m going to do something different with Rev 17-18. Rather than try to explain every tree (i.e., every detail in the chapters), I’m going to spend time trying to show you the forest. I believe with a good study Bible (like the Ryrie Study Bible, the MacArthur Study Bible, or even the NIV/NASB Study Bibles which share the same study notes) you can pick up a lot of the details. Rev 17 and 18 talk about “Babylon,” and what I want to do is show you where the Babylon system that Revelation describes truly comes from and what it will look like in the Tribulation.

We arrive at the descriptive interlude of Rev 17 that teaches us about two of the great dynamics driving the last days. One is a last days religious system directly connected to ancient Babylon. And again, this is something that may fall into place in an incredibly short time (to be exploited by the false prophet for the benefit of Antichrist) in the last days. Consider the cover story that has already been concocted to explain away the Rapture: “The people who leave the planet during the time of Earth changes do not fit in here any longer, and they are stopping the harmony of Earth. When the time comes that perhaps 20 million people leave the planet at one time there will be a tremendous shift in consciousness for those who are remaining.” — Barbara Marciniak, Bringers of the Dawn. Now, I think it will be quite a bit more than 20 million, but you get the idea: New Agers and secular humanists alike agree on one thing: the Christians are the problem; we are the force that is preventing the world from “evolving” the way the aliens who seeded the earth with life intended. In order to evolve to the giant government Utopia that New Age channelers and secular humanists long for, the aliens will have to show up remove the barriers preventing that Utopia. That’s us. We’ll be beamed away so the world can properly evolve.

Let me give you a complementary example: climate change. Nobody talked more about freak weather characterizing the last days than Jesus. The prophets filled the Bible with prophesies of deadly weather. “Global warming” or “climate change” or whatever they’ll call it next ought to be OUR sign; but the secular humanists and new agers who most oppose Jesus Christ and God’s Kingdom have hijacked and perverted this sign of the end times to THEIR agenda, haven’t they? The United Nations has demanded $76 trillion to save the earth from global warming as they redistribute wealth to advance their agenda. In the same way, I believe the same enemies of God will exploit the Rapture to bring about THEIR religious system, which they will use to unify the human population “left behind” by the Rapture and bind the world to their demonic agenda. And it doesn’t matter if it was in the Bible for thousands of years because the unsaved world couldn’t care less about what the Bible says.

Rev 17 talks about this religious system in terms of “Babylon.” Two things mostcharacterized that system: gazing into space for answers (astrology) and binding the human race together in unity against God. Let’s go back to Babylon’s first moment at the Tower of Babel. Why were they building the tower? Nimrod (whose name fittingly means “We will revolt”) unified the world to build the world’s tallest astrological observatory for the purpose of astrology. But King Nimrod doesn’t first say, “Let’s build a tower.” Instead he says, “Let’s make BRICKS” (Gen 11:3). Normally you first decide what to build and THEN pick your building materials. Why is that significant? Consider an altar: God commanded it be built from uncut stones (Exodus 20:25), and therefore each stone is unique in size and shape. Think in terms of people: God made us unique individuals. But now consider bricks: every brick is exactly identical to every other brick. Bricks are faceless and interchangeable. God wants us to be stones, precious in individuality (see 1 Pet 2:4-5), but the god of this world tries to mold us into bricks. And the Hebrew word for “mortar” is the same word as the word for “materialism.” The unification of people against God by materialism. The Babylon system wants us to become faceless and mindless bricks that are mortared rigidly into place by our lust for materialism and our desire to get more and more of the material world.

The Jewish Talmud refers to this founder of Babylon as “the hunter of the souls of men” (see Gen 10:9). He hunted men not to kill them, but rather to seduce them into becoming his subjects and to make himself their master. Nimrod represented totalitarianism and totalitarian government. The ability of people to think for themselves and believe for themselves were simply not in his game plan. And throughout its entire history, Babylon continued to be infamous for its astrology, its materialism and its godless and arrogant totalitarianism. And every single totalitarian Utopia began under the deceitful premise that those who served the cause would be better off materially/economically. And as the people discovered they’d been lied to, they realized that the government had all the guns and held all the power and that it was too late to try to resist the kind of power over humanity the State now held.

If you want to know what God thought of this kind of big government system, read 1 Samuel 8:4-22. God knew that the demand for this kind of government amounted to a rejection of Him. And God knew that all the king that the people wanted would do was TAKE from them.

AFTER the Rapture – which will be hijacked by the world to make it about “obstructionist Christians” being removed by aliens so that the world can evolve into the totalitarian Utopia – would it surprise you if the world is led into a Babylon-style religious system which focuses on unity and on the movements of the celestial bodies? After hundreds of millions of people suddenly just “vanished” into space???

I hope you can see by now how the political (totalitarian Antichrist), the religious (the false prophet) and the economic (materialism, the mark of the beast) all come together in this world system. Because Rev 18 continues to confirm that; you now have a commercial/economic Babylon (see 18:3,11). This may be a geographic city; the “whore” of Babylon in Rev 17 “sits on many waters”; which we’re told in 18:15 meant “peoples, multitudes, nations and languages” (all plural). Whereas Rev 17 describes a religious system characterized by godless, arrogant, Babylon-style materialism which murders anyone who won’t become a “brick,” the Babylon of Rev 18 appears to be a political and economic center. And everything is united – politics, religion, government, and commerce – by this system that the Antichrist will rule. Secular humanists do NOT hate religion; they only hate religion that gets in the way of the political system they’re trying to impose. In a remarkable address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991, Dr. LD. Rue, addressing the predicament of godless modern man, advocated that the human race be deceived by what he called a “noble lie” into thinking that we and the universe still have meaning, purpose and value. He wanted to avoid what he called “the madhouse option” by which everyone would get to choose their OWN personal values (see Judges 21:25). And so he wanted a noble lie that would deceives us, tricks us, compel us beyond self-interests, beyond ego, beyond family, nation, and race. He wanted a religious system – (ANYTHINGBUT Christianity) – which would create the illusion of these things while still promoting the agenda of godless secular humanism. He wanted to bind mankind together by an illusion that he knew was false – “a noble lie” – that would provide all the benefits of religion without any of the costs or inconveniences. That’s what’s coming.

Last week we saw in Revelation chapter 6 the beginning of God’s divine judgment that only Christ alone was worthy to release. As Christ opened the first six Seals, we saw that each ushered in a specific judgment from a holy God on a Christ-rejecting world. We asked in Rev 6:17 with the world experiencing these judgments, “Who is able to stand?” And chapter seven answered that question: those 144,000 Jews who will be called by the Lord and receive HIS seal on their foreheads (Rev 7:3). For the record, I would say that Revelation 7 flashes back to the beginning of the Tribulation after the Rapture has occurred. As we look at Revelation 8 we see Christ opening the seventh Seal which releases another series of seven judgments (the Trumpet judgments (Rev 8-15).

Below is a chart which describes the various Seal, Trumpet and Bowl judgments which gives a basic sense of the effects of each judgment. I didn’t want to spend this article going through the specific details of each judgment when a picture is worth a thousand words.

God accomplishes these judgments. There is no question whatsoever that they come from the throne of God. What is taking place in heaven is every bit as real as what will be taking place on earth. But we can wonder how God brings these judgments about: for example, is the 2nd Trumpet judgment of a fiery mountain being thrown into the sea that kills a third of all the fish a supernatural act of God? Does God create the fiery mountain and hurl it at earth? Or is it the effect of God merely stepping back and allowing sinful man to do what comes naturally (in this case by launching nuclear weapons on the earth)??? As you look at what unfolds: a third of the earth and trees and grass burned up, a third of the oceans and fish life destroyed, a third of the fresh waters being made toxic, darkness covering the earth, intense heat, etc., it seems very much to me that all of these things are precisely what has been described by scientists if we had a large-scale nuclear war. Remember that we’ve got the War of God and Magog (Ezekiel 39) to fight in addition to the battle that takes place after the world’s armies gather at Armageddon.

On my view, I believe that man fulfills many of these terrible judgments upon himself as a result of God merely stepping aside. I offer two reasons: 1) that 67 years ago before the advent of the nuclear age it would have been impossible that these judgments could have been anything other than supernatural acts by God. Now, with nuclear weapons capable of bringing about what is described in Revelation; with the East literally being able to field an army of 200 million men (Rev 9, 16) when there weren’t 200 million human beings alive on the entire planet when John received this revelation; and things like the Euphrates drying up so this demonic Eastern army can cross it coinciding with a series of dams being built across the Euphrates for the very first time in history – it just strikes me as more than coincidence. And 2) because on this view man won’t be able to stand before God and say, “Well, we were doing great without You and then You started doing all this awful stuff to us.” God would be able to respond, “You did all that to YOURSELVES. YOUR own Antichrist did it to you.” God would not have wiped out some 2 billion human beings in Rev 9:13-21 after previously wiping out a fourth of all humanity (Rev 6:7-8); He would merely have stepped aside and allowed man to inflict those judgments upon himself. And doesn’t that message of foolish actions resulting in disastrous consequences jibe well with Proverbs?

That said, another possibility is a super volcano. We have five of them around the planet – and any ONE of them exploding could end human civilization on earth, according to scientists. That fiery mountain could be the top of an actual mountain being thrown off its foundation by the blast of the super volcano. So if you enjoy worshiping nature rather than your Creator, your Creator can give you more nature than you ever dreamed of, can’t He?

The simple truth is that I don’t profess to know precisely how God will fulfill these judgments; I know merely that God is ultimately sovereign over EVERYTHING and that these judgments WILL be fulfilled. And of course I also very much believe they will be literally fulfilled as people really die and as the skies truly darken over the earth.

This will be a truly terrifying time to be alive. Assuming that we begin the Tribulation with 7 billion humans, that number will be down to 3.5 billion (HALF!) considering just the judgments described in Rev 6:7-8 and Rev 9:13-21 alone. And just think of the mass starvation as basically a third of green things perish and a third of the oceans perish. How much worse can things get than they are now? A LOT.

We can’t leave without considering the judgments of Revelation with the plagues of Moses in Exodus. Consider: man gets sores in Rev 16:2 cf. the boils the Egyptians get in Exodus 9:8-12. The waters became blood in Exodus 7:17-21 and the oceans and rivers become blood in Revelation. Darkness settles over the earth in Exodus 10:21-23 and darkness settles over the earth in Rev 8:12 (and 16:8-9). We have locusts described in Exodus 10:21-23 and those pesky locusts come back in Rev 9:13-21 and 16:10-11. We’ve got an invasion of a giant army of frogs in Exodus 8:2-4 and an invasion from a far deadlier human army in Rev 9:13-21 and 16:12-16. And we’ve got hail in Exodus 9:18-26 and we’ve got all kinds of hail in Rev 11:15-19 and 16:17-21. The judgments of the Bowls mirror the judgments of the Trumpets – and very clearly both seem to mirror the judgments of Exodus.

And just why is it that so many Christians understand the plagues of Egypt literally, as having happened exactly as described, and yet refuse to believe that the plagues described in Revelation just likewise might also be fulfilled literally? That frankly might be the biggest mystery of all.

So let’s turn to Revelation 9. We start with the fifth Trumpet judgment (and the first woe). What do we see? We see what are described as demonic locusts. And frankly, whether they are actually demon-possessed locusts or whether they are armored attack helicopters (see: http://www.hellos.com/angelo/revelation/angel5.html for example) we end up with the same point: God doesn’t directly inflict this terrible pain on human beings. He either merely paroled four demons or stepped aside so that demonic helicopter squadrons could attack people with gas or nerve agent that may very well be in our arsenal right now. 2 Peter 2:4-5 points out that God has held some particularly vicious demons since the days of Noah. And we know that unlike ordinary locusts, which “have no king” (Proverbs 30:27), these locusts – whatever they are – will have a demonic king whose name means “Destroyer.” We also know that most locusts can’t leave the grass alone. And as painful as their attack clearly will be, God displays His grace yet again by not allowing them to kill and consign more victims to hell.

Have you ever watched the fun movie Back to the Future? Let’s say I rode my v-twin motorcycle into the early 17th century right into a Puritan village wearing my full face helmet and my leathers and my pointy-toed cowboy boots: what would the people have made of me careening around on something that had no legs but ran faster than any horse? How would they have interpreted me? And how long do you think it would take them to assemble into a mob to seek to burn me at the stake? And then you get the sense of the question, “How would the Apostle John have described me given his 1st century understanding of the world?”

In any event, I do NOT want you to get bogged down on whether the creatures seen in Rev 9:1-12 are demonic helicopters or demonic locusts and have your whole world collapse if it’s the other one; because that is simply not the point. It’s true that we don’t know exactly what these things are; but we have a very detailed description as to what they will do. And we also have a very good understanding of why they’re doing what they do. As the song goes, “two out of three aint bad.” We know that the generation that experiences these things will know all too well what they turn out to be, and we know that this story is NOT “about the future,” but rather it is about Jesus Christ finally and fully overcoming evil and taking His rightful place as King of kings and Lord of lords surrounded by His people. So don’t get bogged down by what you don’t fully know yet; just be thankful you won’t have to find out what the “locusts” are the hard way!

The sixth Trumpet (and the 2nd woe) in Rev 9:13-21 is much the same; are these demon-possessed humans or are they an actual demonic army? The text says, “kings from the east,” plural. I believe it will be a human army from China and quite probably several of her Eastern allies (such as Pakistan); but I don’t know for sure. Whatever they are, we again know just what they are doing and we know why they are doing it. And whether they’re real demons or Chinese communist demons, they’ll going to accomplish the exact same job, won’t they? We can certainly speculate what kind of army this will be; but let us do so knowing that we’re speculating and realizing that, once again, we’ll be dramatically happier not knowing whether these are humans or demons than will be the poor fools who get caught in this army’s path and get to find out firsthand, won’t we?

In the time we have left, let’s briefly consider the message of Rev 9:20-21. We find that the unbelievers of the Tribulation are so militant in their unbelief that nothing will soften their hearts or cause them to worship Jesus Christ. There will simply be no repenting in these people. And we’re told that their lives will be characterized by demon worship, sorcery (“pharmakia” or heavy drug use), sexual immorality (“porneia” from which we get the word “pornography”), murder and theft. They just sound like such a nice, special group of people, don’t they?

Nearly two-thirds of those parolees are categorized as “high-risk” offenders, according to the probation department.

That’s higher than the 40 percent of high-risk offenders that the state had projected would be under county care, Riverside County Chief Probation Officer Alan Crogan said in a recent interview.

“We missed the mark,” he said. “Some of them, regretfully, have serious mental health illnesses. That’s another thing that we didn’t realize — the extent of the mental health issues,” Crogan said.

Sheriff Stanley Sniff Jr. has repeatedly warned Riverside County jails, like many of the 58 counties across the state, would be “overwhelmed” by housing felons.

“The system is so overloaded. We’re not close. We’re way, way, behind,” Sniff has said. “That’s what’s added to our misery, when you’re seeing some terrible surges in crime.”

The very fabric of our society is beginning to whirl out of control. The world you see before you is on the verge of collapse. Something is coming to fill the vacuum. He will be the ultimate big government tyrant. The Bible calls him the beast.

Every believer from the Old to and through the New Testaments has dreamed of eternity with God. But what’s the process? How does it happen – and most important of all WHEN does it happen? We find that it doesn’t fully happen when we die: we are with the Lord, but those who have died up to now have not yet received their glorified bodies. So when does it happen? How?

For the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation, the word “church” – referring to believers in Jesus Christ on earth – is mentioned seven times with the word “churches” being mentioned twelve times. That’s a total of nineteen times, all ye math whizzes. For the first three chapters, it’s church, church, church. And yet, after referring to the church and addressing the churches over and over again, “the church” is not referenced in any way, shape or form until Rev 19 when Christ returns to earth with His saints. And the only believers referenced in between are the two witnesses and the 144,000 Jews– and we aint them. So what explanation makes sense?

This one: Rev 4:1 begins with the phrase “after these things” (NIV “after this”) and we hear the command to “come up here.” And next thing you know we’re in heaven with John. And the Church mysteriously appears to remain in heaven until we return with Christ as King of kings in Rev 19. This can be nothing other than the Rapture of all true believers that occurs prior to the Tribulation. No other answer makes sense to explain the complete absence/omission from the Church on earth during the Tribulation. Want a little more proof? In Rev 1:12 we have a reference to “seven golden lampstands.” In Rev 1:20 Jesus Himself explains that the seven golden lampstands are the seven churches that He tells John to write to. John is called up to heaven, and what does he immediately see? Among other things surrounding the throne of God, he sees “seven lamps of fire burning before the throne” (Rev 4:5). And I’m just going to tell you that those seven lamps are going to be resting on seven golden lampstands! Because the Church is in heaven where it belongs serving as the seven golden lampstands for those lamps. As a further proof, Jesus seven times says in chapters 1-3, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Yet in Rev 13:9 we hear, “If anyone has an ear, let him hear.” Either God is so angry at the churches He’s no longer even talking to them, or He isn’t talking to them because they’re in heaven and in Rev 13 God is urging the inhabitants of the earth to wisdom. Another proof that the church is now in heaven is the twenty-four elders. We know they aren’t angels because they are wearing crowns (Rev 4:4) – and angels NEVER wear crowns ANYWHERE in the Bible because that honor is reserved only for God and for believing humans whom God honors. The Bible mentions five crowns for believers: 1) the imperishable crown for believers who faithfully run their race (1 Cor 9:24-25); 2) the crown of rejoicing to those who win new believers for Christ (1 Thess 2:19-20; Dan 12:3); 3) the crown of life for Christians who endure trials even to death (James 1:12; Rev 2:8-11); 4) the crown of righteousness to those who love the appearing of Christ (2 Tim 4:8); and the crown of glory to shepherds who faithfully minister their flocks (1 Pet 5:1-4). Further, “24” is symbolic of priestly service and priestly service is associated with human believers, not with angels. As an example, there were 24 classifications of priests in 1 Chronicles 24-25.

Rev 3:10 promises that believers will be “kept from the hour of testing which is about to come upon the whole world.” We have the promise of the sign of Noah and the sign of Sodom where Noah, Lot and their believing families are removed before divine judgment falls upon the earth. There’s a clear pattern: God prophetically warns the world of judgment; God removes His people; judgment falls.

So, by way of conclusion, John epitomizes a glorified believer prophetically called up to heaven at the beginning of events in Revelation 4 just as we shall be, and then seeing the rest of events through the eyes of a glorified believer. We will have “a bird’s eye view” of what happens if there ever was one.

And we’ll be surrounding the throne of God, with the throne of God being the central focal point of the book of Revelation. Everything that proceeds does so first from God on His throne. John’s description of God on His throne is awesome in its majesty: God’s glory radiates like a precious multi-faceted gem (Rev 4:2). Jasper is a white diamond representing divine purity; the sardius stone is a blood-red ruby symbolic of divine wrath and judgment. God’s judgment is tempered, however. Because both God’s purity and wrath are enveloped in a rainbow of emerald representing divine life and mercy. The NIV correctly says “encircled.” Circles represent continuity and eternity. And apparently every Christian is going to find out quickly that surrounding the throne of God is the place to be.

Surrounding the throne are four living beings (Rev 4:5-8). They are apparently a class of angel in addition to the seraphim (Isaiah 6:1-7) and the cherubim (Gen 3:24; Ezekiel chap 1). These four living beings may be a type of cherubim because they guard the throne of God (Psalm 89:1; 99:1). What is most interesting about them is that their features resemble the description accorded to the different portraits of Christ in the four Gospels: In Matthew Jesus is presented as a lion, the king. In Mark Jesus is described as the hard-working ox who is fully obedient to the will of the Father. The living being with the face of a man is recognized in Luke’s portrayal of Jesus as the perfect Man. And the soaring eagle is fulfilled in John’s emphasis of Jesus’ heavenly and divine origin.

The word “sea” is also important. In Rev 13 “the sea” is used to describe sinful humanity tossing around in fury and violence and confusion. Isaiah repeatedly uses the metaphor of a restless ocean to describe the nations as “a troubled sea in a storm” (see Isaiah 57:20). See also Jer 49:23 and Jude 1:13. By way of contrast, we who surround God’s throne will be the picture of divine calm and peace, like a sea of crystal flowing out from the throne of God. I like that picture a lot more than the always-raging sea of sinful humanity.

As we view the throne of God we begin Revelation 5: the exalted majesty of God on His throne leads to one thing – to the exaltation of the Lamb “standing in the center of the throne” (Rev 5:6). Consider the incredible concept of God’s throne being a battle chariot from Daniel 7:9-10. The battle chariot used by Old Testament warriors was a 2-3 man operation, with one steering the chariot while an archer/s and/ or spearman fought. God’s throne is a Trinitarian throne. And it is a throne that goes wherever God goes.

You see in Revelation chapter 5 Christ receiving worship in a manner that is impossible to deny. As an example, in John 20:28 Thomas says, “My Lord and my God!” And Mormons and JWs say it’s just an exclamation rather than a recognition of deity. Jesus stands in the center of the throne of God (Rev 5:6). The elders fall down on their knees before Jesus (5:8). They and the angels pronounced Jesus as “worthy” (Rev 5:12). And then God the Father and God the Son TOGETHER are worshiped (5:13-14). It is merely unbelievable unbelief to deny that Jesus is truly and fully God given the statement of Rev 5.

Now, we have a seven-sealed scroll with writing on both sides on the hand of the Father with the question, “Who is worthy to open it?” And NO ONE is found who is worthy except one and ONLY one Person: the Lamb who was slain. The physical characteristics of the scroll make one thing abundantly clear: it is a legal document that was seen in the ancient world: the contract would be written on the inner side, rolled up and sealed with seven seals, and a short description would be written on the outer side. There are actually six different interpretations of what this scroll represents in various schools of thought. But I’ll only mention the two that are genuine candidates. The scroll is either: 1) the title deed to the earth (God gave man dominion over the earth, but Satan usurped that dominion; and Christ won the title deed back but had never exercised His claim until now); or 2) the decree to issue the judgment that will result in the eschaton (end of days) and ultimately in eternity. I believe it is this second possibility because Christ opens the scroll and we initiate the unfolding of judgment and the beginning of the ushering in of the glorious eternal state. So on that view, why does John weep when no one is found worthy (“qualified”) to open the scroll? Because mankind is in this terrible state and nothing can be done to advance their condition and bring this terrible condition of the human race and planet earth to a good conclusion. Only by Jesus opening the scroll can history move to the conclusion that a righteous, holy and merciful, loving God had foreordained for the world.

The seven years of the Tribulation will be the most fateful years in all of human history. They initiate the countdown to the end of human law and lawlessness, and at the culmination of these seven years Jesus will finally personally return in a cataclysmic appearance on earth to establish the long-anticipated Kingdom of God.

The Tribulation will result in the Millennium in which Jesus Christ sits on the earthly throne of David in the earthly city of Jerusalem and rules over the world as is His right that He won for all time on the cross. What is the purpose of all this? It is twofold: 1) to literally fulfill every single promise that God gave to Israel, to God’s physical DNA-people the Jews. Every promise of prominence, of blessing, of wealth and abundance, of shalom, in which Messiah rules from His David throne while all the peoples of the earth come to Jerusalem to worship Him, will be literally and completely fulfilled. And 2) to also literally demonstrate to secular, unbelieving, sinful humanity that they can NOT create a better world – or even a world capable of surviving – apart from God and most especially apart from Jesus. The world is saying, “We could evolve to our highest potential and solve all of our problems if only it weren’t for those damned Christians.” Jesus is going to give them their chance: and in only seven years they will degenerate to the point that they will destroy themselves and literally destroy the planet they’re living on unless Jesus comes to personally intervene and take control. By the time the Tribulation ends, no one will be able to say, “We were doing fine until Jesus showed up and ruined everything.”

Finally, the twenty-four elders, as glorified human saints, also give us a glimpse into our future work and ministry. God will give believers crowns to honor our faithful service to Him while on earth, but we will primarily use those crowns not to exalt ourselves but rather to have something to exalt our God with as we cast our crowns at the feet of Jesus (Rev 4:9-11). But in Rev 5:5-9 we also see these glorified believers being able to encourage and explain (“Stop weeping; behold!”); they carry “the golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” as priests who minister before God. And, yes, we WILL have harps in heaven and the ultimate capacity to make a truly joyful noise before the Lord.

Why that title? Because we’re going to take a “midlevel” approach to explore the Book of Revelation. Obviously, we could easily spend a year or MORE in this book, couldn’t we? For example, I have a two-volume commentary on Revelation by Robert Thomas that totals well over a thousand pages! That’s too low or detailed a level for the type of discussion we can have. Or we could fly over Revelation in one article at a really high level and try to provide a summary of the Book in one hour of Sunday School. What we’re going to do is take a plane ride over Revelation and fly over it at a mid-level altitude that will let us get the gist of about two chapters a week on average.

With that in mind, here are a few “nutshell descriptions” of the Book of Revelation. Here are the one-sentence summaries of Revelation from a couple of pastors I know well:

A fun exercise, approached it from several angles, and settled on this version:

“Jesus pulls back the curtain of time to give us a preview of the final chapters of this world’s drama and give us a glimpse into the world to come.”

Another pastor and I put our heads together to come up with this one:

“Revelation is a message of hope to God’s people as they struggle against evil.”

I tried to be as descriptive as I could in my sentence:

Sinful man will progressively shake his fist at Jesus Christ until evil appears to take over the whole world, but God will ultimately end the problem of evil once for all and provide an eternity of shalom for His people through the King of kings and Lord of lords.

I believe that’s a worthy exercise for any book or passage you study: can you sum up the point/message in a big-idea sentence? You are forced to stop and ask yourself: what is the point of what I’ve read?

If you want to go even further and offer a two-word description of what Revelation is about those two words are “Jesus Christ,” NOT “the future.” Is the future important in Revelation? Of course. But in Revelation we find out what Jesus DID, we find out what He’s GOING to do and we find out that He is King of kings and Lord of lords who will reign over the Universe surrounded by His people forever. And the beauty of the Book of Revelation is that it was written so that St. John’s first reader of Revelation could get that about Christ. And someone a thousand years ago could get it. And we can get it today. They wouldn’t understand all the “future stuff” that was divinely intended for a future day; but they would understand the main idea of the Book of Revelation: One day King Jesus will kick the devil’s butt and throw him along with the world’s worst human dictator into hell, and then it will all be a forever of good times for Jesus’ disciples.

Moving on: how many of you have heard the term “newspaper prophecy”? What does that phrase say to you? Do you think it is intended as a positive or a negative description of literal interpretation of biblical prophecy? It’s usually been used as an insult to deride those who see the last days picture falling into place. On the view of this attack, people like me take whatever headline is in the news at the moment and twist the Bible prophecy to fit that headline. And such people will point to periods when many in a generation believed the world was in the last days when it really wasn’t – particularly the periods around WWI/WWII.

Here’s my response to that: Take WWII. You can see why some people may have believed that we were in the last days: we had a figure – Adolf Hitler – who very definitely seemed “Antichrist-like.” You had the entire world locked in a terrible war that resulted in the deaths of more than 60 million people. But while there were many things that might make the late 1930s and the early 1940s seem like a candidate for the Tribulation, one thing was missing that those who favor a literal interpretation said HADto happen according to the Bible. What was that one thing? THE EXISTENCE OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL. Just as one example, Daniel 12:11, 11:31-37 and 9:27 say that the Antichrist will set up an abomination that causes desolation in the last days during the Tribulation. That is a major event in Bible prophecy. Jesus in Matt 24:15 and Mark 13:14 tells us this was still an event to happen in the future. 2 Thess 2:3-4 says that Antichrist will set himself up in God’s Temple and declare himself to be God. Which temple would that be in? There is only one possible candidate. When Daniel referred to the temple, it could be none other than the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Revelation chapter 11 is a prophetic account that that Temple will one day be built again. And this is just one of many, MANY ways that a literal interpretation of Revelation would lead us to definitively state that no state of Israel, no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The state of Israel as prophesied in Ezekiel simply has to exist for the events prophesied in the last days to occur. And so an informed student of Bible prophecy could know for certain in 1939 that whatever would happen was not yet the Tribulation.

And so the accusation of “newspaper prophecy” massively fails. Because the people accused of perverting Bible prophecy to suit the newspaper are the very same people who were boldly and confidently predicting that the state of Israel would rise for centuries before it actually happened. As an example, Charles Nelson Darby was claiming back in 1819 in writing that if his dispensationalism was correct, the state of Israel would have to be reborn. And had we been relying on our newspapers prior to 1948, as critics falsely claim we do, we would have agreed with said critics and pronounced that Israel had been expunged from the pages of anything but ancient history and that the rebirth of the state of Israel could never have happened. And in fact on THATmost significant ground of the rebirth of the nation Israel exactly as we rightly claimed the Bible prophesied, it is in in fact our critics who looked at their newspapers beginning some 1600 years ago (Augustine appx. 398 AD) and wrongly concluded that Israel was obliterated forever and therefore out of God’s prophetic plan. It was the amillennialists who in fact were the ones who engaged in “newspaper prophecy” in that most pejorative sense.

And while the folks like Hal Lindsey who are demagogued as “newspaper prophets” at least adjust their speculations to accommodate new developments, the amillennialists, postmillennialists, etc. never bothered to adjust THEIR“newspaper theology” to the REALITY that the state of Israel – in direct fulfillment of God’s Word – had come into existence precisely as the premillennialists/dispensationalists they mocked had said would happen. Israel stands as a refutation of these theological systems that attempted to “replace” a national Israel that should NEVER have been “replaced” to begin with.

That said, the Book of Revelation ultimately WILL be “newspaper prophecy.” Because when the events described in Revelation are ultimately fulfilled, a good newspaper will report the events as they unfold and intelligent readers will say, “That’s what the Bible said would happen!” That’s because when Revelation is fulfilled (as it will be), it will very much happen in real time for real people to really witness. And the newspapers of record in that soon-approaching day will report the modern news version of what was revealed to John in 96 AD. Which is to say that there truly is coming a time when one can look at the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other and rightly end up with “newspaper prophecy,” isn’t there?

I previously mentioned the Book of Daniel. Here’s a question: of the 404 verses in the Book of Revelation, how many of them do you think allude to the Old Testament? And the answer is 278 or 69%. That’s a lot of Old Testament! So here’s another bone to chew on: a lot of people say (complain, really) that no one can understand the Book of Revelation because of all the symbolism. Here’s where that falls apart: A GREAT DEAL OF THE SYMBOLISM IS SYMBOLISM RELATING TO THE OLD TESTAMENT, AND WE SAW HOW THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS LITERALLY FULFILLED IN HISTORY. As an example, take the over 400 prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament. We saw that literally HAPPEN, right? And it turns out that these O.T. prophecies were fulfilled LITERALLY, right? My point is that where there is symbolism, you can very often take that symbolism, see what it ties into from the O.T., and then see how that O.T. symbolism was fulfilled. The symbolism of Revelation was in many cases already explained to us before, in other words, and all we have to do is apply the fulfilled O.T. symbolism to the symbolism we need to understand in the Book of Revelation.

Question: “What do the seven churches in Revelation stand for?” The seven churches described in Revelation 2-3 are seven literal churches that all existed at the time that John the apostle was writing Revelation. But even though they were real, actual churches in that time, there is also a larger spiritual significance for churches and believers today. John’s first purpose of the letters was to communicate with the literal churches and meet their needs at that time. The second purpose is to reveal seven different types of individuals/churches throughout history and instruct them in God’s truth and His expectation of them.

A possible third purpose is to use the seven churches to foreshadow seven different periods in the history of the Church. The problem with this view is that each of the seven churches describes issues that could fit the Church in any time in its history. And for those who would say that Laodicea is the final age, well, we’ve already got Bible passages that tell us that there will be a falling away in the last days (Ex 2 Tim 3:1-5; 4:2-3), don’t we? So, although there may be some truth to the seven churches representing seven eras, there is far too much speculation in this regard. Our focus should be on what message God is giving us through the seven churches. The seven churches are:

(1) Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) – the loyal, persevering, enduring church that had left its first love (2:4).

(2) Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11) – the persecuted church that would be rewarded for its faithful suffering (2:10).

(3) Pergamum (Revelation 2:12-17) – the formerly faithful church that needed to repent because it had embraced false teachings (2:16).

(4) Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29) – the active, serving church that became too cozy with a false world system (2:20).

(5) Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) – the church of incomplete deeds that had fallen asleep and needs to spiritually wake up (3:2).

(6) Philadelphia (Revelation 3:7-13) – the small, patient, persevering church that is urged to hold fast and promised to be kept from the time of testing (3:10).

Jesus begins speaking to His Churches because He tells us what’s coming and asks us, “Are you ready?”

Tune in next week. I will be going through the entire Book of Revelation taking about two chapters per session. Revelation is the ONLY Book in the Bible that promises a special blessing to those who read it (Rev 1:3), but many don’t bother to study it because they have been told that it is so difficult. It isn’t all that difficult if you read it with a literal hermeneutic principle and simply accept the story as it is being told. And in fact the only reason it is so incredibly “difficult” is because the amillennialism/postmillennialist approaches have so wrapped the Book up in allegory that it “literally” doesn’t say what it in fact rather clearly says.

How does the Tribulation begin? I was surprised to hear a pretty well-informed Christian answer that question by saying, “with the Rapture.”

Nope.

The Bible is very clear: the Tribulation officially kicks off when Israel signs a seven-year peace treaty with the Antichrist.

I see a lot of things very clearly now. The world wants the beast to come much the way that I long for Messiah Jesus to come. The world is pushing and pressing and manipulating and demagoguging and slandering as much as it can to prepare the way for the false messiah who will lead them to the ideological future of their dreams.

They don’t realize that the invariable result of the political and economic future they dream of is the closes thing one can get to literal hell on earth. That is because “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t
believe” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Reason is becoming increasingly possible because the truth is foolishness to the unbelieving mind (1 Corinthians 1:18). “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,” God has told us in Romans 1:22. And God has begun to fulfill His Word that “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent” (1 Corinthians 1:19).

Human beings have been tainted and perverted by sin. The Scriptures tell us that over and over again. All kinds of evidences and experiments show that human senses do NOTnecessarily lead us to truth. And that truth is even more true when it comes to the ideas of our minds. All of the many “-isms,” such as Marxism or communism or socialism or fascism or existentialism or nihilism or pretty much whatever “-ism” you want to name, not only do not bring you to truth, and not only take you further away from the truth, but literally anesthetize and even inoculate us from being able to possibly see the world as it really is.

Do you want to know how we can see reality as it really, truly is? We endeavor to see it as God sees it. And we can do that by reading God’s Word and reshaping and reordering our minds to align with the Kingdom of God rather than the sinful nature of man. When you look at the world through the lens or prism of Scripture, then and then alone can you begin to see reality as it truly is.

But secular humanists will not do that. They will do ANYTHING but that, in fact. They will NOT see the world the way the God who created it sees it. They do not want to see God and they do not want to see reality the way God sees it. Rather, they believe that the can create their OWN reality and replace our reality with the one that they have fabricated through their theories and their narratives. The result is something that I have said many times on this blog: the secular humanist left have become the stupidest people on the face of the earth through sheer brute force of their wills. They WILL NOTsee, accept, or understand the real world; rather, they are as determined as their ultimate master, Satan, to impose their own reality by whatever means seem to work for them.

They will not see that the very actions they take to fabricate their Utopia (ignoring the brute fact of history that EVERY SINGLE SOCIALIST UTOPIA HAS GONE WILDLY WRONG) will cause the hell on earth that the Bible warned us of – as epitomized in “the people’s” upcoming decision to elect the Antichrist as their world leader.

Hal Lindsey put it this way back in 1973:

It’s once again very important for us to realize that the Book of Revelation is John’s firsthand account of what he saw and experienced when he was taken up into heaven. How difficult it must have been for him with his first-century orientation to find adequate descriptive words to verbalize the incredible things he viewed! Even fifty years ago the things described in the Book of Revelation were so far beyond our comprehension that no one dreamed they could happen apart from some supernatural assistance.

Now such things as John described are not only possible, but could happen within thirty minutes! There are already enough nuclear-tipped missiles on station and ready for launching to do everything predicted in this chapter [chapter 8 of Revelation]. Dr. W.H. Pickering of Cal Tech confirmed this when he warned, “In half an hour the East and the West could destroy civilization.”

Although it is possible for God to supernaturally pull off every miracle in the Book of Revelation and use totally unheard-of means to do it, I personally believe that all the enormous ecological catastrophes described in this chapter are the direct result of nuclear weapons. In actuality, man inflicts these judgments on himself. God simply steps back and removes His restraining influence from man, allowing him to do what comes naturally out of his sinful nature. In fact, if the Book of Revelation had never been written, we might well predict these very catastrophes within fifty years or less! — Hal Lindsey, There’s A New World Coming, pp. 114-115

Man does this to himself. Man chooses it. Man does it. Man votes for it. Man elects it. And we even find that: man cheers for it and even that man worships it.

The official kick-off to the Tribulation is Israel signing a covenant with the Antichrist. And man will very much push Israel into that step.

The past 64 years, since Israel became a nation, Israel has had one or two allies with the rest of the world increasingly isolated against her. But one of those allies was mighty America, and none of Israel’s enemies could defeat her with her great ally protecting her.

That period ended in 2008 when America voted for Barack Hussein Obama. And America reaffirmed its choice earlier this month when it said that it wanted more of what Obama’s spiritual guide for 23 years prophetically called “God damn America.”

Israel is now more isolated than it has EVER been.

Israel is forced to contemplate an invasion of Gaza for the same reason it had to do so a few years ago: because Palestinian terrorists are launching hundreds of missiles that could land damn near ANYWHERE and which force a complete shutdown of Israeli society. Such an indiscriminate attack against innocent civilians would be decried and condemned by the world if anyone else did it TO anyone else, but it is the Arab world viciously attacking Israel, and so the elite talking heads pooh-pooh the violence while reserving their condemnation against Israel. An article from the generally leftist Daily Beast from when this last happened in 2009 proves what I’m arguing:

Israel has never been more isolated. Its best friend, the United States, had vetoed 41 Security Council resolutions condemning Israel in the past three decades, but was about to vote for the Jan. 8 resolution denouncing the attack on Gaza when President Bush intervened, at the behest of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Still, in the face of unprecedented global criticism, the U.S. didn’t dare veto, but merely abstained. Europe, never Israel’s close ally, erupted in near unanimous outrage over Gaza, with fits of anti-Semitic violence in France, Sweden and Belgium. […]

The current rocket attack is nothing new. Arabs hate Israelis and love murdering their citizens and their children. When they run out of rockets to fire at Israel, they demand a cease fire that prevents Israel from destroying the weapons that the terrorists will stockpile for the NEXT surprise attack against Israel’s people. The terrorists stockpile and fire their rockets in dense population centers in homes and schools and hospitals counting on the fact that Israel will have to kill women and children to destroy the rockets that would otherwise be used to try to kill Jewish women and children. The world that could frankly care less if Jewish women and children are murdered are outraged that Palestinian women and children are being killed. It doesn’t matter if those Palestinian children are being killed because Palestinian terrorists are putting rockets in their cribs. And so the world demands that the Arabs get their cease fire so they can stockpile more weapons and start the war again. Over and over and over, as needed, until Israel is gone. This vile game is called “international diplomacy.”

Iran WILLget nuclear weapons. America voted for that on November 6th. The Iranian leadership knows with certainty that Barack Hussein Obama will NEVER order a massive military attack against Iran. Iran knows that it is 16,275,183,000,000 percent free to continue working on their goal of Armageddon and Obama will do nothing but offer rhetoric and meaningless sanctions to prevent what will now necessarily happen.

And allow me to cite the source that affirms that Obama’s sanctions have been completely ineffective just in case you are fool enough to believe that Obama was being honest with you:

PARIS/VIENNA (Reuters) – Iran is enriching uranium at a constant pace and international sanctions aimed at making Tehran suspend the activity are having no visible impact, the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said in unusually blunt remarks on Tuesday.

The point made by Yukiya Amano, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reinforced the view of many analysts that increased Western economic pressure on Iran has failed to make it change its nuclear course. […]

So the only way to stop Iran is war. But Obama won’t go to war. And Iran knows full damn well Obama won’t go to war to stop them from threatening the existence of Israel. Therefore Iran will have nuclear weapons and Iran will also have the means to deliver those weapons much sooner than the Obama administration has claimed.

Israel is being pushed and prodded and forced into the arms of Antichrist. And Israel will ultimately do what the world wants and sign that peace covenant so that hell on earth may officially begin.

America will soon be getting what it most dearly yearns for: it will get to worship the beast and take his mark.